Causa y Afecto en Gmaj

From the moment we are born, we continue to be challenged by infinite sensations, reactions, forces. Our bodies—as physical entities, of an organic and sensitive nature—continue to receive and respond to them. All being affected by the movements that radiate from within each one, as a product of those intensities.
Our existence is conditioned by this constant bodily relationship. An interaction that can be permanent due to its continuity, but that involves change, transformation, life at the end of the day: we are nothing more than processes.

It is impossible to define our body in a specific position, which coincides with all the desires to which our affections and emotions lead us. It would still be another biased way, within a framework of already established possibilities, of pigeonholing ourselves into a “known cultural grid”¹.
However, by carefully reviewing our trajectory, we can glimpse a certain cause. It is from the set of those moments, in which emotions are not enough to describe our shock, that we can build our destiny. It is these experiences, which mark our lives so much because they are partially ineffable, that give us a clue to pursue the desires of that child who lives inside us.

Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development

Our future is marked by “affects”², conceived as “those pre- or non-conscious bodily intensities that arise from the perception of images, words, sounds, etc.”³. They are a phenomenon that overflows our consciousness. There is no way to fully explain them. Emotions, like the cultural symbols that they are, try to address them communicatively, but it is this approach that keeps them from defining them.

“Cause and Affect in Gmaj” reflects this idea of affection and the search for purpose, showing a work that never remains static.
Simulating the endless sketch of some child, it represents those affections that, through movement, give rise to change, to life, with the unstoppable drawing of lines irregular in layout and thickness. These, with their chaotic appearance similar to that of a scribble, refer to this inability to translate our sensations; accompanied by a lack of concern in explaining them, which has that pastel-colored facade of some set of pencils found somewhere. “To create the world, highly sophisticated devices are not needed; the fundamental thing is not to lose the innocence and imagination inherent in children’s thinking and behavior,” message from Fillou (reference of the fluxus movement)⁴.

The aesthetic proposal of the work brings into account the fluxus phenomenon, from its lack of definition, spontaneity and fusion of media; focusing on the puzzling. Thus, an acoustic-visual succession of arpeggios in a G major scale ends up developing, which besiege the forms shown on the canvas. The sound environment reinforces the inarticulate and untamed affects, reproducing the chords randomly every five seconds. In addition, it has the possibility of temporarily stopping them by pressing “p”, or continuing to generate them superimposed with “a”, even regulating their volume with the mouse wheel —interactions possible thanks to the use of p5.js user functions.

Going back to the sloppy strokes, an iterative algorithm was used to produce them. This generates sets of points without much cohesion, using “perlin noise”. Once calculated, each group is connected forming a line, which runs the distances between its parts.
Thus showing that the acts promoted by the affections of our soul leave a residue (the points) that, despite not being distinguished (due to the drawing of the line), is there and gives a unique and unrepeatable form to our experience; which will then affect our perception of the world, mutating our child, our cause, in a particular way. We could even relate it to Cesar Aira from the concept of the “irreproducible”: “The concrete reality of the work would be made up of the work itself and the time that involved its conception and execution, understanding this time as the historical passage, in which each of its points is unique and unrepeatable, and therefore unreproducible.”⁵

The proposal is concise: let yourself go. Only like this, wandering between the trajectory, the affects will assault our body. Its excess margin to perception will open the paths to project our desires: it is up to us to explore them and discover where our cause is.

Literature

Solana, M. (2020). Afectos y emociones. ¿una distinción útil? Revista Diferencia(s), N. 10, pp. 29-40.

AIRA, César. ([2013], 2016). “Sobre el arte contemporáneo” en Sobre el arte contemporáneo. Buenos Aires: Literatura Random House, pp. 11-56. (DAA: 1:02m)

FRICKE, Christiane. (1999). “Nuevos Medios” en AAVV. Arte de siglo XX. Vol. II. München: Taschen.